Totalitarianism

In our most recent lecture in week 9 we looked at how Totalitarianism originated and Arendt’s theories and opinions concerning it. To start off, we must first understand what Totalitarianism is.

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state in control believes that “everything is possible” as well as striving for limitless power through the control of both the public and private sectors within it.

For these societies to work successfully, a policy of Terror needs to be implemented within them. This policy sees mass, senseless and reasonless slaughter. This aims to drive fear into the heart of the public so nobody can undermine its progression against the government from the inside as well as destroying anybody’s sense of individuality. Destroying people’s individuality was especially important as it makes human beings difficult to control and gather up into a collective movement.

The ideologies are necessary in order to eliminate the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves complimenting the policy of Terror perfectly. Changing a cultures ideology frees the mind from the constraints of common sense and reality and ultimately abolishes general standards of morality and humane human behaviour. This breakdown of the stable humane human world means a loss of institutional and psychological barriers which normally set limits to what is possible.

For example, the Nazi’s “final solution” denies Jews citizenship, making them stateless and removing their human rights. These rights were not their natural rights and only applied within a nation, therefore by removing these rights, Jews became superfluous and prefect victims of the Nazi regime.

These tactics were evident in both Stalin’s dictatorship over Russia after the formation of the Soviet Union as well as the widely known Nazi party regime which took control of Germany. Both dictatorships led to mass genocides which is essential in any Totalitarian society. Totalitarianism needs to be constantly attacking and has no other purpose than to destroy. There is no end to a totalitarian society’s destructive actions because it needs them to keep control. If the Nazi’s had completed their final solution, they would most probably not of stopped but simply targeted another social/religious group and begun eradicating them as well.

“The essence of totalitarian government is ‘total terror’.”

The idea behind these radical and seemingly irrational methods of control is to speed up Charles Darwin’s idea of the law of nature, whereby the strongest race will wipe out all opposing races. It seemed logical to bypass the slow progression towards this final communistic state and just implement it within a number of years not decades or even centuries of cultural progression.

Hannah Arendt wrote a series of articles for the New Yorker as well as writing about a court case against Adolf Eichmann who was a key member of the Nazi party. Eichmann was in charge of organising the transportation of all the Jews to concentration camps with terrifying efficiency.

Hannah Arendt believed in the utter individuality and spontaneity of people. She highlights the fragility of civilisation when looking at the change throughout the heart of Europe during the Second World War. She mentioned that even in a sophisticated, intellectually and culturally elite country of Germany. Whole, free minded and morally correct whole people can fall through cracks and act in a way which they would never normally even consider. By taking away man-made structures implemented in society a civilised human being can be corrupted, for example Imperialism, which are disrupted structures.

When writing about the court case in Jerusalem involving Adolf Eichmann, she believed that he should definitely be considered guilty however not for the reasons proposed by that of the court. She believed his only crime was not thinking about his actions and serving whoever was in control with blind obedience. She believed that no thinking person could be responsible for genocide and that it was not necessary to possess wickedness in order to commit great crimes.

When Eichmann was asked why he aided the final solution he replied with a number of clichés explaining how he was only following orders and there was nothing he could do but follow the law of the land. He stated; ‘one should act in a way that the Fuhrer himself would do the same’. Kant’s idea of a Categorical Imperative, by definition means; Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. Eichmann was well aware of Immanuel Kant and used this in his defence.

Arendt said that people should think for themselves even in disrupted structures where everyone around them isn’t. Arendt’s definition of thinking is the judgement made from the interaction with a person’s internal plurity. This is something you should follow even before the law of the land. She believed that people consider freedom as a social enactment and not an individually free opinion of how to act and that people will exercise freedom in groups or in concerts opposed to following their own individualistic beliefs and opinions.

This has been highlighted by a man named Stanley Milgram who undertook a study to see how destructive people could be if they are following orders and simply being obedient. This study involved electric shocks supposedly being delivered to someone in another room every time they answered a question incorrectly. These electric shocks increased in voltage each time until they had the power of 450 volts which was enough to kill the participant. Of course the participant was an actor and was only pretending to be shocked and a staggering 2 thirds of all people undertaking this study gave participant a shock which could essentially kill them.

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